Where do eBay entrepreneurs get the ideas for their businesses?
What is it really like to run an eBay business day-to-day? While
eBay entrepreneurs may follow different routes to success, they all
have one factor in common: eBay has transformed their lives in ways
they wouldn't have dreamed possible when they first launched
their businesses. Meet three eBay entrepreneurs who are living the
American Dream. Perhaps their stories will inspire you to dream
big, too.

Orchestrating Destiny

Vital Stats: You know Madonna and Cher go by their first
names only. Now meet Richard. He's 46.Company: The name of his Long Island, New York-based
business is also his e-mail address:

Richard appreciates anonymity. When he used to sell antique
violins, people would come to his New York City house, and while
"most of them were nice, some of them made me feel
uncomfortable," says Richard. "One guy didn't seem to
have taken a bath. And another was actually drawing flies. That was
a little disconcerting. But eBay keeps you away from
that."

Richard has requested that his last name not be published, and
he has reasons for wanting his privacy. For one thing, although he
cheerfully obliged to be in a photo shoot, he doesn't feel like
shouting from the rooftops to the entire literate world that, hey,
Richard So-and-So has an incurable brain tumor.

After his diagnosis in 1995, Richard went under the knife and
kept his career as an attorney for five years. But when the tumor
returned and he had to undergo radiation treatment, Richard knew he
had to leave the law profession. "If you know anything about
brain tumors, the radiation really knocks the crap out of
you," he says.

For about eight months, Richard was in a self-described La-La
Land, but by 2001 and 2002, he had more energy and focus-despite
the tumor being very much active. His wife has a comfortable career
on Wall Street, so Richard didn't feel forced to start a
business. But he had been restoring and selling violins for years,
and had even sold a few on eBay. So he decided to turn violins into
a full-fledged business.

He typically ships seven or eight violins per month, which can
sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. The rest of the
time, he's searching for violins that need a little or a lot of
TLC. Some violins Richard gives away if they aren't worth
restoring but are too good for the trash bin. For instance, earlier
this year, he sent one to a school in Beijing.

Restoring violins is a for-profit business, but it's also a
mission and a lifestyle. Richard's workday usually begins at 9
a.m. after dropping his son off at school, and it ends after
picking him up. His 7-year-old son, Kevin, has autism and needs a
lot of special attention. "He's really my primary
focus," says Richard. "My entire day revolves around
him."

That's why eBay has been a good fit-it suits a variety of
lifestyles. "If you have a particular interest in an area, and
if you have an expertise, you can either make money or enjoy the
[trade-offs], like spending more time with your son. And you learn
new things and find new interests. It can be very
exciting."

And for as long as he is able, Richard plans to keep learning
and enjoying his dual roles as entrepreneur and Mr. Mom.

Steven Holt grew up admiring John Wayne so much that he may have
incorporated a little of The Duke into his personality. After all,
Steven became a Marine, a tough-guy career that Wayne would have
admired. Naturally, his favorite film is a John Wayne
movie-Sands of Iwo Jima. "It's the greatest Marine
movie ever made," he raves.

After the Marines, Steven fell in love with Crystal, a high
school teacher, and later married her and moved to her hometown,
Denison, Iowa. He got a job with a home-warranty company, and they
lived on a 180-acre farm. They had a son named Calvin, now 9. Life
was good.

That would have been that-until Crystal attended eBay University
with her mother, who had started a business on eBay. Crystal
thought it would be fun to open one, too, to earn extra income.
Because Steven was such a movie buff-he also loves anything
starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price-they
decided to try selling films. They found a distributor, and in
September 2002, started selling. By November, they realized one of
them had to quit his or her day job, or they would have to scale
back the business.

Steven left the home-warranty industry. He says becoming an
entrepreneur was "scary at first." But the way he sees
it, "Your fate is in your own hands. I had never stepped out
like that. When I quit my job, we had only been doing this company
for two months."

But he has no regrets. "I love it," says Steven, whose
office has been overtaken by movie memorabilia. "My biggest
issue is balance. I could work on this business 24 hours a day. I
have to fight the urge to [not] close the door."

The Holts, who first started by offering John Wayne movies, have
since gained an edge by selling relatively difficult-to-find films.
At their eBay site, you'll easily find the 1980 Volkswagen
classic Herbie Goes Bananas, but not many recent films. When they
stocked the three-disc Indiana Jones trilogy, it sold terribly,
Steven surmises, because anybody could find it at virtually any
store in the country. The Holts buy their inventory upfront so they
can ship within 24 hours and not be dependent on their
distributor.

Now the couple sells 3,500 to 6,000 movies a month. That's a
lot of movies, but then eBay is "a global marketplace,"
says Steven, who has two part-time employees to help ship movies
from the office building behind their farmhouse. "It's
incredible. There are a kazillion people who shop on
eBay."

The Holts see a lot of future growth in their company and plan
to soon transition their two part-time employees into full-time
positions. Last year, the couple tried taking a two-week vacation
and admit it was almost a disaster; they were backlogged with
orders when they returned. But by training their employees to fill
in, the Holts will be able to take sick and vacation days.

They're also grateful for the assistance they receive in the
eBay community. Not only does eBay send them tips through e-mail on
how they can market themselves better and bring in more sales, but
they also receive advice from other sellers and customers on eBay.
"That's the difference between eBay and other types of
online auction sites," says Crystal. "It's like a
traditional community, even if you may not ever see the people
you're doing business with. But people here just seem so much
friendlier than they do in other parts of the Internet. Whatever
your questions and concerns are, the people on eBay are nice, fun
people who genuinely want to help, and we all give each other
advice."

Whatever business you go into, sell what you love, urges
Crystal, who, when she isn't teaching, focuses on the customer
service end of the business-writing or calling people who have
questions. "That's what makes it rewarding. Having a
business isn't like you see it on infomercials, where
you're sitting on the beach sipping a mai tai. That's
unrealistic," Crystal says. "You're not going to have
to work, work, work, but you're going to have to work. But the
nice thing is that you can take off to have lunch with your kid and
not worry about exactly when you're getting back, and you make
your own hours."

Then there are the intangibles. "Everybody has a favorite
movie," says Crystal, who favors Rock Hudson and Doris Day
films. "We've received e-mails from people who tell us
they bought a movie from us because it was the last film they
watched with their father or grandmother, or because they want
their child to see a movie they loved as a kid. It makes you feel
good that you're making a difference in somebody's
life."

A New Start

Vital Stats: Diane Bingham, 40, CEO, and Michael Bingham,
53, vice presidentCompany: FromGlobalToYou.com (eBay User ID: from
globaltoyou) is the Web site storefront name; the company is KDM
Sales & Design, based in Provo, Utah. KDM stands for
"kids," "Diane" and "Mike," and sells
high-end antiques-much of it furniture-from around the world.2004 Projected Sales: more than $4 million

It wasn't their last $20, but it felt like it. In 1998, then
34, Diane Bingham had recently exited an alcohol rehab center. She
recalls that she was about 18 when she first had a drink, and for a
long time, she was simply a social drinker. But in her late 20s, it
became a problem.

"I didn't know how to stop," says Diane. She and
Michael spent their life savings "to save [my] life," she
says. They didn't have health insurance. "We spent every
penny we had," Diane adds. "I had a lot of guilt over
that." It didn't help when Michael had his own health
crisis and needed an emergency triple-bypass operation. His life
was saved, and so was Diane's, but with their financial
situation in tatters, their future looked grim.

Diane wanted to bring some income into the family, yet stay at
home with their five children. Her father was an antiques dealer,
and Diane liked to search flea markets and auctions for rare
antiques and sell them to the general public. When she told this to
Michael, who earned $10 an hour at a local hardware store, he gave
her $20.

"Hey, see what you can do," he said.

"I'm serious," said Diane. "Never challenge a
woman."

Michael laughed.

That made Diane more determined. She drove around in a beat-up
truck, started making purchases, and then used the proceeds from
her sales to buy more items to sell to antique dealers. As she
became more immersed in the world of antiques, she learned about
eBay, and, as she puts it, "I found heaven. That's when I
said, 'Why not sell on eBay?'"

She borrowed $3,000 from her father so she could buy a computer.
She says her father and her husband thought she was "nuttier
than a fruitcake," but one year later, as Michael headed to
work, he observed his wife in the backyard. She was struggling to
pack a lime-green vinyl chair into a box.

"That's it," Michael sighed. "I'm going
to quit my job and help you."

"That's when things really started going, having both
of us working on the business," beams Diane, who offers an
aside about packing that lime-green chair: "And don't
think I wasn't making it look a little harder than it
was."

Today, Diane and Michael have a company that made $2.2 million
in 2003 and is poised to double that in 2004. "We double every
year," says Diane, who has approximately 60 employees and
contractors, some who work in England, France and Italy.

And you have to get over your intimidation about starting a
business. "That was huge for me," says Diane, who also
acknowledges, "I had no choice. I needed food money, I needed
rent money."

Now through her work, Diane says she has sold antiques to
several famous actors, actresses and at least one big-name
director; but she can't divulge names, because she respects her
customers' privacy. Still, it's another example of how far
Diane has come from her former life.

Even selling antiques must feel like a quantum leap from her
high school days, a time when she was a cheerleader who was
embarrassed that her father sold antiques for a living. "The
last thing I wanted were ugly, gross, dusty antiques in my
house," she says.